Anderson Austen R, Lastrapes Mallory
School of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS, USA.
Psychol Rep. 2024 Mar 27:332941241241632. doi: 10.1177/00332941241241632.
Various components of social functioning predict depression and these associations can vary by gender. Bi-directional associations may be important to consider as social factors may influence depressive symptoms while depressive symptoms may impact social factors. Most previous longitudinal research examining bi-directional effects has traditionally used the cross-lagged panel model (CLPM), which has some inherent weaknesses. This study sought to apply a more comprehensive analysis to examine bi-directional associations between friend engagement, social functioning, and depressive symptoms. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) were tested on three waves from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study ( = 5890). Average levels of social functioning were positively associated with friend engagement and negatively associated with depression. Fluctuations in social functioning and friend engagement were negatively associated with same-wave depressive symptoms. Lastly, depression was predicted by previous fluctuations in social functioning, although the findings varied by gender. This study showed that the relationships between social factors and depression are apparent within and across large time intervals, even while controlling for between-person associations. These findings add further support to the need to attend to social life as a predictor of depression in older adults. Future research could improve upon this research by examining the characteristics of the friendship interactions and including more diverse samples.
社会功能的各个组成部分可预测抑郁，而且这些关联可能因性别而异。双向关联可能很重要，因为社会因素可能影响抑郁症状，而抑郁症状也可能影响社会因素。以往大多数检验双向效应的纵向研究传统上使用交叉滞后面板模型（CLPM），该模型存在一些固有缺陷。本研究旨在应用更全面的分析方法来检验朋友参与度、社会功能和抑郁症状之间的双向关联。对威斯康星纵向研究的三个波次（n = 5890）进行了随机截距交叉滞后面板模型（RI-CLPM）检验。社会功能的平均水平与朋友参与度呈正相关，与抑郁呈负相关。社会功能和朋友参与度的波动与同期的抑郁症状呈负相关。最后，社会功能的先前波动可预测抑郁，尽管研究结果因性别而异。本研究表明，即使在控制个体间关联的情况下，社会因素与抑郁之间的关系在较长时间间隔内及不同时间间隔之间都是明显的。这些发现进一步支持了将社会生活作为老年人抑郁预测因素加以关注的必要性。未来的研究可以通过考察友谊互动的特征并纳入更多样化的样本，来改进本研究。
